This blog is my place to vent and share resources with other parents of children of trauma. I try to be open and honest about my feelings in order to help others know they are not alone. Therapeutic parenting of adopted teenagers with RAD and other severe mental illnesses and issues (plus "neurotypical" teens) , is not easy, and there are time when I say what I feel... at the moment. We're all human!

Sunday, February 8, 2009

PTSD and stomach flu


So after we left Kitty's therapy I got an idea. I decided to let Kitty go to the mall with a pretend $100 (our estimate of the amount of money a foster parent would have to buy clothes for a new child – I would hope it’s more, but I wanted to make a point to Kitty). She would have to buy a week’s worth of clothes including shoes and undergarments with this money. Then we’d go to Walmart and do the same thing. We don’t need to go to thrift stores because we already know what $100 would buy there. Kitty was very excited about this idea.

Of course Friday night I came down with stomach flu and spent all weekend in the restroom or flat on my back. Ponito was finally better so he and the other kids all went to Grandma’s house to spend the night Saturday night. At some point during the weekend, Kitty told Grandma that she has been seeing one of her step-father’s faces everywhere -on walls, on Hubby’s face (which explains her extreme reaction on Friday). I’m worried about the fact that she didn’t feel comfortable about telling me. She was probably afraid I wouldn’t allow her to go to school, the school dance (she wasn’t allowed to go anyway) or would make her take more therapy. This has been going on for a week and sounds like PTSD hallucinations to me. She did give me lots of hugs Sunday afternoon and made sure that Grandma told me about the hallucinations.

Kitty started throwing up tonight (Sunday) so feels pretty horrible (she’d just taken her night meds so I know they didn’t stay down). I’m assuming she’ll be better in time for therapy on Tuesday. The actual vomiting has only lasted about 4-6 hours at most – and then recovering takes 2-3 days.

My anti-social Bear is the only one who hasn't gotten it. Maybe he won't.

1 comment:

Lorraine Fuller said...

One time when I was a youth director we did a similar money experiement, not for the same reasons but for fun. We were doing a slumber party. Each girl and each of us adults had a pretend 1000 dollars to spend at the mall. We spit up into pairs and the girls wrote down what they would buy. They could not go over the 1,000. It was fun to see what they choose. It was also fun to see on some of the worksheets how much they had crossed out and changed as they realized that even that huge amount of money didn't go so far as they thought! I think the 100.00 thing is a great way to teach her about money and value!